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I’ve been asked by the County Manager to respond to your question about the status of Arlington’s snow operations plan vis a vis trail clearing. As you stated, staff did prepare a proposal last winter for the County Manager’s consideration that would expand the County’s snow clearing operations to include 13 miles of high-priority trails. Generally, the proposal was to fund, for a single winter, a test program that would have paid a contractor approximately $10,000 per snow event to clear 13 miles of priority trails. (During a typical winter – if there ever is such a thing – snow clearing operations are mobilized about ten times.) Thus this proposal would have reflected an approximately $100,000 budget commitment.

Given the County’s financial status at that time, it was decided that this could not be accommodated in the FY2014 budget proposal. Nonetheless, the proposal will be raised again during this next fiscal year’s budget discussions, taking place in the coming months. If the budget change request is accepted, I will be sure to brief the Bicycle Advisory Committee accordingly.

As I have told the committee before, if Arlington continues to insist that it somehow deserves to be considered for a Gold Bicycle-Friendly Community certification from the League of American Bicyclists, I will personally go down to their offices and lobby to have it rolled back to Silver. No community that treats its bicycle and ped transportation corridors as second-class to its roads deserves to consider itself somehow among the elite communities in the United States.

Of course when we were getting our bike/pedestrian count indoctrination in September, the county rep stated that the trail clearing policy had changed and that money was available to clear the high traffic routes. This was after saying that the automatic trail counters recorded a hugh drop off in trail usage during the big snow events of the 2009/2010 winter and the case was made that clearing the trails should be a priority. And don't get the discussion restarted on the street car, aquatic center, bus shelter, dog parks, bocce courts, etc debates. That and the county can't get its act together to do its part to clear snow off county property sidewalks for kids to walk to school, but is able to enact an ordinance for home and business owners. Over to Arlnow.com to enjoy that site's comments pages on these topics. grumble, grumble, grumble.

I've emailed the County Manager and County Board suggesting that this would be an excellent expenditure to include in the budget close-out (where the board decides what to do with any money that didn't get spent in the current fiscal year) because I believe that process is happening in November. It certainly wouldn't hurt if others made the same suggestion. Even if it is too late to get it included in closeout it will demonstrate support for including it in next year's budget.

Chris Slatt posted this message from David Goodman of the Arlington County Staff on the Arlington County Bicycle Advisory Committee list serve this morning:

As I have told the committee before, if Arlington continues to insist that it somehow deserves to be considered for a Gold Bicycle-Friendly Community certification from the League of American Bicyclists, I will personally go down to their offices and lobby to have it rolled back to Silver. No community that treats its bicycle and ped transportation corridors as second-class to its roads deserves to consider itself somehow among the elite communities in the United States.

How can it cost $10K to have a snowplow drive up the Custis then down the W&OD? That's 2 hours of plowing, tops.

I wish I could cross country ski. I've always thought the best plowing policy would be to leave them unplowed as long as they're skiable, then once bare spots develop, plow it. I realize at that point it's packed down ice and hard to plow. Hmm.

How can it cost $10K to have a snowplow drive up the Custis then down the W&OD? That's 2 hours of plowing, tops.

I wish I could cross country ski. I've always thought the best plowing policy would be to leave them unplowed as long as they're skiable, then once bare spots develop, plow it. I realize at that point it's packed down ice and hard to plow. Hmm.

I've always seen the "cross country ski" thing as a barely concealed excuse to avoid the cost of plowing. I rode the W&OD all winter long for several years and never saw someone on skis, even when there was lots of snow on the ground. I did see lots of people walking/running/cycling on it though, even when it was a snowy, icy, rutted, dangerous mess.

They really need to just treat it like the transportation corridor that it plainly is.

I skied on the W&OD those two big snowstorm years we had. I also skied down Broad St. in Falls Church City since it was so desolate. I think XC skiers would be fine using the gravel running tracks alongside the trail, on the assumption we have enough snow to merit that activity at all.

I've always seen the "cross country ski" thing as a barely concealed excuse to avoid the cost of plowing. I rode the W&OD all winter long for several years and never saw someone on skis, even when there was lots of snow on the ground. I did see lots of people walking/running/cycling on it though, even when it was a snowy, icy, rutted, dangerous mess.

They really need to just treat it like the transportation corridor that it plainly is.

I've got a pair of 35 year old waxless cross-country skis that I've used very little in the Arlington area. However, during the 2009/2010 snow events I was out skiing every day that my office was closed and headed from my neighborhood to Shirlington on a combination of the 4MRT and the W&OD. I've also skied from my neighborhood up the Custis Trail, across the Key Bridge into Geogetown. Most of our snow events do not drop enough snow for good skiing on the MUPs and the quality of the snow is poor for my equipment, too wet so that it sticks and clumps on the bottoms of the skis.

I've heard that people do actually ski on it, I just never saw anyone (or even saw tracks that I can remember). Obviously, when the snow was really deep I generally wasn't riding. Pushing a bike through 12" of snow was a bit much for me.

Even conceding that, I would bet that the number of people riding/running/walking during snow events outnumbered XC skiers by a few orders of magnitude.